


The Sun's Light Failed

by shiphitsthefan



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: #StandByMe, Accidents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aromantic Will, Asexual Hannibal, Asexual Will, Biblical References, Caretaking, Codependency, Dark Will, Demisexual Hannibal, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epilepsy, Episode: s01e08 Fromage, Fix-It, Glaring Authorial Pretension, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Jimmy Price/Brian Zeller, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panromantic Hannibal, Possessive Hannibal, Queerplatonic Relationships, Quoiromantic Will, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Seizures, Someone Helps Will Graham, Surprisingly Enough It's Hannibal, The Leather Jacket From Antipasto, Will Graham Has Encephalitis, Will Knows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:23:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7916734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/pseuds/shiphitsthefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know what you are," Will tells him. "You’re the Ripper. I see you."</p>
<p>A long pause, and then Hannibal very carefully says, “You shouldn’t speak of such things. I dread the thought of you and calamity meeting under inconspicuous circumstance.”</p>
<p>Will steps forward into Hannibal’s space; he eases down to his knees in front of him, but never breaks eye contact, and it doesn’t hurt to look at Hannibal. It’s like looking into a carnival mirror; they’re the same, but different. “That isn’t a denial."</p>
<p>Hannibal takes a deep breath. He reaches out and brushes his fingers along Will’s cheek. His hand is trembling. “Does the lamb come so freely to the slaughter?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I might have had a slight breakdown this past weekend over the inherent trouble of shipping Will and Hannibal right off the bat. You know, given the gaslighting and the abuse and the framing for multiple murders. Essentially, I spent about two days kinkshaming myself.
> 
> Pro tip: Don't kinkshame yourself.
> 
> Anyway, "Fromage" is one of my very favorite episodes, and I wanted to write a piece for [Hannigram Acethetic](http://hannigramacethetic.tumblr.com/)'s [#StandByMe](https://twitter.com/aceofhannigram) event, and I really needed a fix it fic for season one, so here we are. It's not like I have three other Hannigram WIPs or anything. [shifty eyes]
> 
> Thanks to [Llewcie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Llewcie/pseuds/Llewcie/works) for betaing. Thanks to the fandom at large for encouraging my pretentiousness. <3

_It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land_ _until three in the afternoon,_ _while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last._

  _\--Luke 23:44-46_

 

Will needs none of his empathy to know what he looks like to most others. Frumpy and frayed around the edges. Painfully awkward and off-putting. Damaged and unreturnable; expired and inedible; too cheap to warrant hunting in the junk drawer for the crumpled receipt, let alone another trip to the store. Unstable. Vulnerable. Inoperable.

Some days, Will feels the same. More and more with each passing hour, if he’s being honest with himself, and he very rarely finds occasion to lie. It’s more than a little infuriating that the particular sadists whose minds he is made to inhabit have such a stable and positive opinion of themselves.

Hannibal, though--Hannibal’s different, because Will has no idea what Hannibal thinks about him, and hasn’t had the pleasure of diving behind Hannibal’s eyes to see what he thinks about himself.

Until now, that is.

The late afternoon sun doesn’t so much stream through the windows as it does filter in; the light is warm and fluid as it should be at this hour, yes, but it’s more akin to groundwater ebbing up through the cracks in an aquifer, slow, steady, sure. It heats the fabric of Will’s green winter-weight coat, alternating sleeves as he follows the steps of a dance he is never invited to, only asked to clean up after. There’s no reason for Will to be walking through the scene--there’s a living witness who happens to be a trustworthy pillar of the community, not to mention an unpaid consultant for the Bureau. Or, perhaps more accurately, an unpaid sitter for the paid consultant of the Bureau, but Will doesn’t feel like being particularly unkind to himself at the moment.

After the tussle with Budge in the dark cavern of horror he had liked to masquerade as a proper shop basement, Will had been too high on adrenaline to truly appreciate how tired and drained he was. Coupled with his very real belief that Hannibal had been killed--why else would Jack have called him to a crime scene at Hannibal’s office, after all, seeing as Jack seemed hesitant to label Will with human feelings beyond “anxious” and “still useful”--followed by a bone-deep relief that Hannibal was, in fact, very alive, Will is surprised that he’s still standing. Given his precarious grasp on reality at any given moment, however, Will would accept being told that he had actually toppled over uselessly like a misplaced domino in a Rube Goldberg machine. Until that time, however, Will is content to accept his uprightness as Immutable Fact.

He would check to see if Hannibal was looking at him, a strange sort of gauge Will’s taken to using to determine how Real things are, but that would require opening his eyes, and Will refuses to let a moment of this dance be stolen from him. Will had suspected that he’d watched through Hannibal’s eyes before, but had no way of being sure.

Now, however, _now--_

How _ever--_

_Now--_

 

_Will leans forward, almost a crouch from someone as tall and imposing as he, the piano wire uncoiling and unspooling itself. An elegant weapon for an elegant man, or rather, elegant men. But not elegant friends, though they could have been._

_A glance up confirms that Hannibal had no interest in Budge’s friendship; the tension in Will’s arm as he spins the wire is more than enough of a tell to that. The counterweight swings like a pendulum, perfectly practiced, artful. Will watches Hannibal duck back, then to the side, then stumbling--it’s clumsy, out of character, and throws Will for a wiry loop, but he recovers, unlike Hannibal. One well-placed kick to the groin, and Hannibal’s falling back._

_And then Hannibal grabs the ladder, and Will understands that he’s chosen his weapon. A ladder to heaven against a tightrope to hell. Fitting. Apt. Taut, like a red string, fate-tied._

_Will loses focus for a moment, loses his connection to Budge. His brain sweats, and he blinks at the ash-grey beast behind the ladder, and the void stares back._

_Oh, and_ that _is why the string is red; how could it not be, wrapped around Hannibal’s forearm, slicing clean like a fillet knife, blood coating and dripping and near-black? It’s intoxicating to watch, and Will jerks himself back into Budge. If anyone is going to make Hannibal bleed, it’s going to be Will._

_Hannibal uses the pain as leverage and takes a swing at Will, and one of them has grabbed a table. Glass rains down on them like tears, but Will can’t focus, can’t tell who broke it, who pushed, who pulled. He watches Hannibal rear back and bash his head into Will’s, and he goes flying toward the desk. Will grabs the letter-opener and flips over just in time to see Hannibal lunge at him._

_It’s the most brutally graceful step Will has ever seen. He feels a sudden intense jealousy, that Budge was on the receiving end of this leap and didn’t appreciate it, because it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, it’s_ beautiful.

_Fast forward, and they’re on the floor, struggling for the letter opener. Will kicks Hannibal in the face, swinging the opener from side to side, finally jabbing it into Hannibal’s thigh just above his knee. The sound Hannibal makes is so gratifying, like music, a pained grunt through teeth and_ oh, _how he wants to hear it again, wants Hannibal beneath him struggling, doom pointing downward, as alive as they both feel right now in this moment._

_A scalpel in Will’s arm, and the opener drops, and it devolves into a fist fight, a clash of titans, a show of dominance, a well-choreographed disaster. Hannibal looks_ right, _bleeding like that. It suits him better than any suit. Budge miscalculates, and Hannibal’s smile is predatory and gleaming, sharper teeth and sharpest glee. Will hears his own arm breaking, his shoulder snapping, and he likes those notes, too. Hannibal’s composition is exquisite._

_The table and the stag tip over onto Budge’s head with a lot of help and very little tipping. Hannibal is battered, gorgeous, and so very, terribly real._

_This was his design._

 

Will opens his eyes. The crime unit has filtered out while he’s been absorbed in the dance, the bodies now gone, but Hannibal hasn’t moved. Their eyes meet through the rungs of the ladder, and to hell with the consequences. Will _needs_ this.

“You killed Franklyn,” he says quietly.

Hannibal’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes glint red in the sun. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I’m not wrong,” Will replies, which he isn’t, though he certainly isn’t right. “Because I know who you are.”

“I should hope so, Will,” says Hannibal. He makes to cross one leg over the other--delicate, feminine, bent over the knee and dangling--but his face pulls slightly, the only indication of pain from his wounds, and he puts his foot back on the ground. “It would be yet another sign of your deteriorating mental state otherwise.”

Will laughs a little. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Enlighten me.”

“I know _what_ you are, then.” Will swings around the ladder; he feels like Fred Astaire, light and airy and free. “You’re the Ripper,” he says, stepping up the first rung, looking up at the books. “I see you,” but he doesn’t look at Hannibal. He doesn’t need to. Will is acutely aware that he is the prey in this equation.

“And what makes you say _that?”_

He sees Hannibal in his periphery, face still unreadable, hands folded in his lap. “You left Cassie Boyle for me. Kabuki in the field. Worthy of the Ripper himself. It could have been Jack, or me, or any of us. We all knew what to look for, what to emulate, to imitate, to copy.” Will takes another step up the ladder, and another, so he can look down at Hannibal. “But none of us have artist’s hands like you do. And I hadn’t killed before. I didn’t know how it felt yet.”

Hannibal looks down at the floor, but flicks his eyes back up at Will quickly, like he does in their conversations sometimes. “How did it feel?”

Will grins. “I told you already. Righteous.”

“So why does this make me the Chesapeake Ripper?”

“Anyone could have called Garrett Jacob Hobbs. I know that I didn’t, and I highly doubt it was the secretary. That leaves you to drop a professional courtesy call, to warn him we were coming.” He raises his eyebrows and adds, “Very polite of you, ‘the man on the phone’. What did you say to him?”

Hannibal licks his lips and settles back in his chair. “You’re thinking irrationally. Perhaps it would be best if I took you home to Wolf Trap.”

“Hobbs told me to see,” says Will, hopping down from the ladder, standing freely and unafraid in front of Hannibal. This might be the most confident he’s felt in his entire life. “And I have. I see _you._ The only question that remains is what you intend to do about it.”

“About what?”

“My sight.”

A long pause, and then Hannibal very carefully says, “You shouldn’t speak of such things. I dread the thought of you and calamity meeting under inconspicuous circumstance.”

_He’s so sincere,_ Will thinks. _He feels so_ much _. He feels for_ me _. He’s not a sociopath, or a psychopath; that’s why Jack can’t catch him. He’s just Hannibal, and that’s not what Jack’s looking for._

Will steps forward into Hannibal’s space; he eases down to his knees in front of him, but never breaks eye contact, and it doesn’t hurt to look at Hannibal. It’s like looking into a carnival mirror; they’re the same, but different. “That isn’t a denial,” he says.

Hannibal takes a deep breath and reaches out to brush his fingers along Will’s cheek. His hand is trembling. “Does the lamb come so freely to the slaughter?”

“Was the shepherd looking for me?”

He had been glassy-eyed when he saw Will earlier. How Hannibal can express everything with his eyes but never on his face will always be a mystery to Will, but how Hannibal feels _now,_ how he looks at Will _now_ …

Will’s never felt powerful before.

“You would have me dead,” Hannibal whispers. His hand is bolder now, fingers tracing the contours of Will’s face.

“Never.”

“Caged, then.”

Will shakes his head slowly. “No.”

“Then what, Will?

He wants to touch Hannibal, but Will leaves his arms at his side. Will’s just read him; it’s Hannibal’s turn to read. “You’re my friend, Hannibal. I would have you here, out in the world, where you belong.” He chuckles ruefully, makes his shoulders shake. “It only makes sense, really. You’re more civilized than I am, unusual hobbies notwithstanding.”

“The career you have let Jack make for you, of catching killers.” Hannibal’s brings his other hand to Will’s face. They grip his head like a vise, and Will knows how easily he could end up like Franklin. “How do you live with such extreme cognitive dissonance?”

“It’s not the same,” says Will as Hannibal searches his eyes. “You and them--other murderers, I mean. They wouldn’t understand me like you do.” He swallows dryly. _“I_ wouldn’t understand me without you.”

Hannibal smooths his thumbs over Will’s cheekbones as they simply sit in the silence. The sun has shifted, casting shadows across them. At last, Hannibal exhales and slumps a little, nodding tightly like he’s made an unexpected decision. “I need to make a call,” he says.

“To who?” asks Will as Hannibal releases him and pushes his chair back to stand up.

“A colleague--” Hannibal hisses as he rises. “A colleague from my residency. A neurologist. He owes me a substantial debt, and I mean to collect it. You need help that I am not fit to provide.”

Will frowns and sits back on his heels. “I don’t understand. I tell you I know you’re not just _a_ serial killer, but _the_ serial killer, and you dial up a neurologist for me?”

He looks back down, and it’s the second time Will’s seen the mask slip from his face--both over him, both today. Hannibal looks _concerned,_ and _guilty,_ but also immensely fond. “You aren’t the only one who has seen and kept a secret,” says Hannibal. His hand gravitates back to Will’s head, and he runs his fingers through his hair. “My knowledge of you is just as deadly. But, as you say, I am your friend. It would behoove me to behave as such going forward.”

Hannibal’s touch is unexpectedly soothing, and far more grounding than the kiss he shared with Alana. It’s stabilizing, being petted. The stag in the corner doesn’t bother him now; the skittering of claws across the roof fades. Will feels like he could melt into the floor, or maybe he already has. Now that he isn’t empathizing with the devil, Will is inexorably tired, hyper aware of the sweat beading on his forehead. He closes his eyes to protect them from the salt as it drips.

“Will? Are you still here?”

“I’m not sure,” he says dreamily. “This is nice. Do we have to leave?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?” asks Will. “You need to rest your leg.”

He can hear the corners of Hannibal’s mouth turn up. “I assure you that I am well.”

“And I’m apparently _not,_ and I’m saying that it can wait until morning.”

There’s laughter, and it must be from Hannibal, because he’s pulling Will up to his feet, and the sound gets louder the closer Will gets. Hannibal cards his fingers through the hair on both sides of Will’s head, and it pulls a small contented sigh from his throat. “You’ve never done this before. Why have you never done this before?”

“I didn’t know you knew me,” Hannibal admits. “The closeness of human touch, the intimacy of such acts--it often betrays us.”

Will blinks his eyes open. He feels less wobbly on his feet, looking up at Hannibal’s mussed hair. “Am I your Judas?” asks Will, nearly a mumble.

“No,” says Hannibal, and he presses his lips to Will’s cheek. “I trust you not to destroy me, Will; please trust me to save you in return.”

“I do trust you,” and Will smiles, and Hannibal smiles, and the sunlight flickers through the window, then dims, then fades away as Will succumbs to the static in his brain and blacks out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for non-graphic medical content and hospitalization. Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is a nasty beast, and recovering from it is rough stuff.

The first week of hospitalization is mostly a blur for Will. Looking back, he’s not even sure if what he does remember is what happened or just another hallucination. Will vaguely recalls blinking his eyes open when he was being hooked up to the plasmapheresis machine, and he thinks he stayed awake while a tube was shoved down his throat. The latter he suspects to be a concoction of his overcooked brain, because he remembers looking up and seeing Hannibal looking down at him, cold and indifferent.

Will knows Hannibal couldn’t have stood over him unaffectionately, not after how intimate they were in Hannibal’s office. Especially not when his other almost clear memories are of Hannibal holding his hand, Will’s fingers limp and lifeless and Hannibal’s palm strong and warm. He remembers convulsing and watching Hannibal’s back as he left to call for a nurse, no suit jacket, the ends of his tie sweeping over his shoulder as he ran from the room.

Most of Will’s memories from that time involve the gray, antlered man standing in the corner of the room, watching him. A few times, the stag pressed its warm nose into his hand. He woke up once floating in blood as his dogs screamed. Now that he’s thinking about it, though, Will remembers Hannibal’s hands on his face, soothing him, telling him in calm, steady voice that his dogs are fine, that Will is fine, that everyone is safe.

But now, Will’s been entirely awake since three in the morning, give or take a few naps, and there’s no sign of Hannibal, and he’s not sure how safe he feels.

“What, you don’t think I can protect you?” Beverly asks him with a sly smile. “I’m pretty sure I can take on whatever your creepy brain fire can cook up.”

Will laughs, and it hurts his throat, reminds him of the tube that likely wasn’t. “You’re a lot scarier than anything I might find under my bed.”

“Is that so?” She hands him his plastic water jug from the overbed table. “Maybe that’s why I can’t get a date.”

He takes a long drink, closing his eyes in relief. “Thank you.” Will feels her hand tap the top of his twice in friendly reassurance. “How’s the rest of the team?”

Beverly chuckles. “Jimmy and Brian are playing mix and match with this corpse totem pole that was found down in Grafton.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

Will cracks his eyes open again. They’re so dry that it feels like the skin on his eyelids is splintering. “How many bodies?”

“Jimmy says eight, Brian swears nine,” she tells him. “There are apparently perverse favors promised to the winner of the bet.”

“Of course there are.” Will shakes his head. “What about Jack?”

“We’ve got a pool going for how many times he’s called the hospital to ask about your release.” Beverly rolls her eyes. “So basically, he’s being Jack.”

“Well,” he begins, “you can let him know I’ll be here for at least three more weeks, and then I’m on house arrest for a few more months beyond that.”

“Damn. That bad, huh?”

“Doctor said I’m lucky to not have permanent brain damage, but I’m probably gonna be on Cytoxin for a few years at least and anticonvulsants the rest of my life.” Will sighs before adding, “It wasn’t caused by a tumor, so there’s a twenty-five percent maximum chance of the encephalitis coming back. And they might put me on antipsychotics, if the hallucinations get uncontrollable or dangerous again.”

Beverly whistles lowly. “Holy shit, Will. And Dr. Lecter _smelled_ all that on you?” When Will nods, she says, “You are one lucky son of a sea biscuit, you know that, right?”

“In more ways than you know.”

“Speaking of the devil.” Beverly leans in, crossing her arms on the bed rail and resting her chin atop them. “What’s going on between you and the good doctor?”

Will licks his lips, and takes another sip of water. The straw is rough as if it’s been chewed on; it makes Will wonder if he had a seizure at some point while he was drinking. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

She tips her head to one side. “Yeah, well, you have been pretty out of it.”

“So why do you ask?” Will passes his insulated mug back to her to set on the table.

Beverly grins, broad and bright. “He’s been here every day since they brought you into the ER. Canceled all his appointments, referred all his patients, arranged for someone to _take care of your dogs, Will.”_

There’s a warmth spreading in Will’s chest. He can’t really think of anything to say besides, “Oh.”

“So what’s going on?” she asks again.

Will shrugs. “He’s a friend. A very good friend.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s the truth!”

She sits back and ruffles Will’s hair. “And I bet you wouldn’t mind if it went beyond that, if you got...you know, _closer.”_

Will is saved from answering by a knock on the door to his room. A few steps, a hand pulling the curtain--and the metal rings on the round curtain rod sound uncomfortably similar to those skittering hallucinations--but then there’s Hannibal, poking his head around the corner. His hair is unstyled and falls soft around his face, reminding Will a bit of how he looked after fighting Budge. Hannibal’s face is healed now, though, which is somewhat disappointing.

The rest of his outfit, however, is anything but uninteresting. Will never thought he’d see Hannibal Lecter in dark wash denim, never mind a black leather jacket with a motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm. He looks over at Beverly’s gaping mouth with a hint of amusement.

“Hello, Will,” says Hannibal, setting the helmet down in a chair before moving to remove his backpack.

“Who are you and what have you done with Dr. Lecter?” Beverly asks.

Hannibal spares her a glance, but mostly keeps his eyes on Will. There are circles beneath them like he hasn’t slept well; his face is slightly gaunt, like he hasn’t eaten well, either. Will knows he must look like hell, though he hasn’t had opportunity or inclination to ask for a mirror. But the way Hannibal’s looking at him is almost worshipful, and there’s that powerful feeling again, like he felt at Hannibal’s feet. Here is the Chesapeake Ripper, one of the most feared serial killers, and Will Graham, of all people, captivates him.

Beverly outright giggles. “I guess that answers my _other_ question, doesn’t it, Will?”

He must look nervous, because Hannibal comes to his rescue and tells Beverly, “It was most expedient to travel by motorcycle during my residency. Now I find it relaxing, not to mention that is far easier to find a parking space at a busy hospital.”

“Leather’s a good look on you,” she says, clapping him on the arm as she heads out. Grabbing her own red leather coat from the chair she’d been sitting in, she tells Hannibal, “Take care of him, alright?”

“Of course.” Beverly gives Will a little wave and pulls the curtain closed behind her.

“Alana said she made you go home last night,” Will says as Hannibal drapes his jacket over the back of the chair. He’s wearing a soft grey button-down, which Will expected--there’s only so much casual that Hannibal could possibly pull off in public--but there’s no tie, and the collar points are shorter, and he’s left the first button undone. Will looks down at himself, considering his own attire for the first time. He’s wearing a pastel yellow hospital gown, and that’s it; Will guesses that underwear would have disturbed the groin catheter for the plasmapheresis machine and…

Shifting awkwardly, Will notices the foley catheter for the first time. How it had escaped his attention before now, he has no idea. Which means that Will is sitting here in newborn-appropriate colors with his pee collecting in a bag underneath the bed.

Fabulous.

“Yes,” Hannibal confirms, completely oblivious to Will’s sudden and complete mortification. He opens the backpack and starts pulling out containers, setting them down on the overbed table. “What else did Alana tell you when you awoke?”

“That you’ve been sleeping in the chair next to me and driving the nurses nuts,” says Will. Hannibal looks up at him briefly; judging by the slight glimmer in his eyes, he’s happy to confirm that Alana’s telling the truth. “What were you upset about?”

“I was _not_ upset.” He stops opening a covered bowl. “I may have been somewhat annoyed,” he concedes.

“What happened?”

Hannibal doesn’t even blink as he says, “They failed to change the collection bag often enough to my satisfaction.”

Will groans into his hands. “Of course you would notice that.”

“I was also concerned that they were not keeping your comfort in mind when the nasogastric tube was being placed.”

Will slumps back into his pillow, the palpable relief pushing all other thoughts from his mind. “So that wasn’t a hallucination. And uh, for the record? You looked kind of pissed off, from what I remember.”

“I don’t enjoy seeing you in unnecessary distress.”

“Unless you’re the one causing it, you mean.” There’s a small part of Will’s brain that tells him this isn’t really all that funny, that he has three different IV ports and two catheter tubes and a urine collection bag as evidence that no, there’s nothing truly humorous about this situation, at all. He concedes a bit of ground to those particular cells and attempts to rein in his glee. Will feels strangely flattered to be a walking science project, as sick as that may be. He would have rather given full consent to it and not nearly died, of course, but what has passed is past.

“I did say ‘unnecessary’.” Hannibal hands him one of the bowls and a spoon; Will recognizes it as one he’s used before at Hannibal’s home, and is biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Of course Hannibal would bring his good flatware to the hospital. “Are you hungry?”

“Most people would ask first before handing me food.”

“You may not have noticed,” begins Hannibal, picking up his own bowl and spoon, “but I am not most people.”

“Yes, I am hungry, and yes, I have noticed.”

“I should hope so, considering the nature of your profession.”

“Speaking of--” Will looks into his bowl for the first time. It smells amazing, yes, but he’s never seen a black chicken before. At least, Will assumes that’s a chicken. He’s never questioned Hannibal’s food before, and he has no intention of starting now, especially since he doubts Hannibal is aware that his cannibal puns are about as subtle as an artist sculpting with a chainsaw in the middle of a monastery.

“Eat your soup while it’s still warm,” Hannibal tells him. “Please,” he continues, much more softly.

“Okay.” He remembers his manners--he wonders if Hannibal even felt the minute downward shift of the corners of his mouth--and says, “It smells good. Thank you.”

Hannibal’s lips resume their resting line, and they eat in a companionable silence, save for the ever-present beeping of the various monitors. Will tries to avoid the delicately-ornamented chicken’s foot floating in his soup over near what looks to be a coralline structure of white gelatinous goop. If he doesn’t think about the ingredients too much, the soup is really very good.

When he’s halfway through the bowl, Hannibal asks, “Did they start the second round of antibiotics?”

Will wrinkles his brow. “I didn’t even know I was _on_ antibiotics.”

“The entry catheter in your shoulder became infected a few days ago,” explains Hannibal. “These things tend to happen with long-duration ports.”

“That must be why my shoulder’s so sore. And the antibiotics come in through which IV?”

Hannibal swallows his spoonful of soup. “I would look behind door number two.”

“Oh, no, don’t make me laugh,” says Will. “It hurts when I laugh. Trade you for my water?” Hannibal takes his bowl and then, in perfect seriousness, holds the straw-side of the cup toward Will. “I think I can hold my own mug, Dr. Lecter.”

“So you can,” and he lets Will take it from him. “I’ve become somewhat used to being your hands.”

Will takes a long sip. “I thought this was the first time I’d been awake.”

Hannibal sighs and sets down his own bowl of soup. He pulls the chair closer to Will’s bedside, pressing right up against the metal rail. “It’s the first time you’ve been coherent. You haven’t been awake often, but you…” Hannibal trails off, biting his lip. If Will didn’t know any better, he’d think Hannibal was in some kind of pain. “You always wanted water, when you were semi-conscious. Corticosteroids can cause excessive thirst. But you kept chewing the straw, and it was difficult to chart how much water you were drinking, which made intravenous fluid and electrolyte replacement tricky.” He pauses, likely to consider his words.

“I hope you didn’t have to listen to me ask for water and then...I don’t know, ignore me or something.”

Hannibal clears his throat. “I may have also harassed the nurses’ station into fetching ice chips on more than one occasion.”

“Did you--” Will exhales, almost a distressed wheeze. “Did you feed me ice chips?”

“Well you were certainly in no condition to do so.”

“Wait, why did I chew on the straw?” Will asks. “I’ve never had an oral fixation. Not a pen cap chewer or anything like that.”

“The encephalitis was more advanced than I suspected.” Hannibal reaches toward Will’s face, hesitates, then withdraws his hand. “You had simple partial seizures fairly often the first few days. It often presented in your face and jaw.”

“So the straw was in my mouth and I’d just...clamp down?”

“Yes.” Hannibal’s hand is gripping the bed rail so tightly that his knuckles are white. “It was fascinating to watch--you have a very expressive face, even when not under your control. After you had the generalized tonic-clonic, however, I found them difficult to be present for.”

Will should probably be worried by his lack of disgust in Hannibal’s admission; instead, he’s perfectly willing to chalk it up to scientific intrigue. “Did you step out of the room for them?”

He very quietly says, “I never left your side unless forced to do so.”

“Like to demand ice chips. Which you fed to me.”

“Is it so hard to believe that I took care of you, Will?”

There’s a great cosmic joke buried in here somewhere, Will’s certain. It’s the worst kind of irony that Will feels guilty for hurting Hannibal’s feelings when the man had very nearly killed him. “Your intentions are going to be automatically suspect for a little while. I’m sure you can understand why.”

“I can appreciate your hesitance, yes.”

Will turns his hand over on the bed, palm up, and Hannibal takes it in his almost immediately. “What were you going to do? Before you had a change of heart and got me help.”

“At first,” begins Hannibal, “I merely meant to study your condition. Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is quite rare; thus, there have been few case studies performed. I realized very quickly, however, that you were too much of a liability. You were getting too close to the truth. Allowing for and encouraging your rapid mental deterioration was the most expedient and unobtrusive way to manage the situation. Ultimately, I meant to frame you for the Ripper’s crimes.” Hannibal laces their fingers together and squeezes Will’s hand tightly. “If it matters to you, I would have regretted it terribly.”

“You don’t regret it now?”

“It didn’t come to pass,” Hannibal says. “How could I regret what never occurred?”

Will sips at his water, mulling over the new information. This is likely the closest to an apology from Hannibal that he’ll ever get. It’s certainly undeniable that Hannibal is affectionate toward him, that his friendship is genuine. The argument could be made that it wasn’t before, or that only Will considered them friends, but Will doesn’t think so. Hannibal isn’t unfeeling; he’s a control freak enslaved by curiosity, and that takes precedence to emotionality where intellectual pursuit is concerned.

“Would you have sprung me?” Will asks around the straw in the corner of his mouth, finally glancing over at Hannibal.

“From prison?”

“I think we both know I would’ve wound up with Chilton.”

“The answer is the same regardless,” says Hannibal. “Of course I would have.”

“And how do I know that, if I relapse in the future, you won’t twist my illness into personal opportunity again?” Will knows there’s a bite to his words, to his voice, to the way his face distorts into a sneer. It hurts, but, then again, so did Hannibal.

He looks properly chastised, though, remorseful even. “I did not intend this,” Hannibal says, his eyes shifting back and forth from the machines to Will. “I would never put you through such an experience again. Now that I have been forced to consider the possibility of your utter loss…” Hannibal’s gaze falls to their joined hands. “The world would be a much smaller, uglier place without you in it, Will. We have known each other a very brief time, but I have never had someone that understood me, or that I understood in return. It is...distasteful to consider a life devoid of your presence.”

“Hannibal, if I’m so important to you, why did you send me to find Budge?”

“You said you felt unstable,” says Hannibal, licking his lips as he pulls reasonless reason from nowhere. “It seemed a good way of proving to yourself that--”

Will barks a laugh, then immediately winces. “You’re so far up your own ass that you don’t know you’re talking shit.”

“Perhaps _you_ would like to tell me why I sent you then.” Will’s never heard Hannibal sound miffed before. It’s more adorable than it has any right to be.

“Well,” he starts, “I had just told you I kissed Alana. Did that upset you?”

An awkwardly long pause, and then, “I was unaware you had feelings for Alana was all.”

Will scrunches his eyes up and does his best to suppress the bubbling laughter in his chest. “Oh my god, you were jealous. I can’t believe you sent me off to possible death because _you were jealous_ . _”_ He pulls himself together as best as he can, then squeezes the insulated mug in between his hip and the left-hand bed rail. Will turns to lay the side of his face on the pillow, then lifts his now free hand to Hannibal’s cheek. “Alana’s a good friend,” Will tells him, enjoying the weight of Hannibal’s face in his palm. “Like I told you, I needed something stable to hold onto. I had kind of just hallucinated a raccoon into my chimney.”

“A good friend,” Hannibal repeats coolly, but doesn’t move away from Will’s touch.

“Yeah. I trust Alana. If it had been Beverly there, I would have probably kissed her.”

“Do you kiss all of your friends, Will? Or simply the ones who prove convenient?”

Will _hmms_ in faux thoughtfulness. “You know,” he says, “I’m not sure. How curious are you to find out?”

Hannibal’s nostrils flare, and he smiles enough to show the points of his teeth. “I won’t share you.”

“Hadn’t crossed my mind to even think you would.” Will raises his eyebrows and gives Hannibal an appraising look. “I’d like to think I know you better than that.”

“Am I more than a friend to you, then?”

“Possessive much?” Will brushes an errant strand of hair out of Hannibal’s line of sight.

Hannibal simply says, “What’s mine is mine.”

“Honestly, I’ve never been able to tell where the lines are drawn,” Will confesses. “You know, where friend turns into partner, or lover, or whatever. It hasn’t helped that I’ve never really _had_ many friends. But,” he continues, “if I were to rank the friends I have, you would easily be my closest.”

“Would your closest friend have the right to keep you to themself? To separate you from the flock?”

“Considering you already tried to separate me from my sanity, I’d say that’s entirely reasonable.” Will shakes his head, but keeps smiling. There is nothing about this conversation that isn’t completely absurd.

“Then I am very curious, indeed.” Hannibal leans down but, instead of meeting Will’s lips with his own, he kisses his temple. “But first you must get well.”

“Lucky me,” says Will. “I get my own private doctor.”

Hannibal runs his fingers through Will’s hair, slightly damp with sweat and clinging to his skin. Will’s eyes slide close as his hand drops back to rest on his stomach. His limbs feel heavy, and he moans quietly. “You like to be petted,” Hannibal observes.

“Mmhmm.”

“Do you empathize with your pack so greatly?”

Will pushes his head into Hannibal’s hand. “So it would seem. But don’t psychoanalyze for once, okay? Just...mmm, just keep doing that.”

Hannibal chuckles lowly. “I had no intention of stopping,” he says, and continues stroking Will’s hair, sometimes scratching a little behind his ear, until Will drifts back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never thought I'd use the word "catheter" in a fanfic, but here we are.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally going to be only three chapters long, mainly because I have two other WIPs right now, plus various challenge/event fics I pick up. Then I got several comments that were all sad because it was almost over, and I realized that _I_ was sad that it was almost over, and now I have no idea how long it's going to be. Essentially, I'm writng this fic as therapy and an excuse to (ab)use my religion minor. Updates may be infrequent, so be aware of that.
> 
> Anyway, here's "Wonderwall".

Will wakes himself up screaming and shaking. He feels disoriented beyond the fuzzy feeling of suddenly being pulled from sleep, and his first thought is of escape, that he absolutely must leave his bed and get away from whatever the threat may be. Sitting up worsens the disorientation, though, making him feel dizzy and nauseous, heightening his confusion. He looks down at his legs and watches them twitch out of his control; a quick glance to his hands shows them trembling, too.

Hannibal’s hands gently clasp one of Will’s. “Easy, Will,” he says, like he’s gentling a horse. “You’re alright. Only a mild seizure.”

“Mild my ass,” Will replies once he’s caught his breath. He’d nearly hyperventilated and hadn’t even noticed. “And it’s not a seizure. Just a night terror, like I’ve always had.”

“You’ve experienced these since childhood?”

“Yeah. I jumped into a river once, while I was asleep. Dad heard the splash and had to come fish me out. I never woke up, slept right on until morning.” Will is relieved to see his limbs shaking less, though they don’t stop. “The sleepwalking, the nightmares, _this,”_ he says, gesturing to his legs with his head. “The restless legs don’t happen as often, I don’t think. When I wake up shouting, sometimes I notice it.” A quick glance at Hannibal shows a vague sort of concern in his eyes. “It got worse recently, I guess because of the encepha--why are you looking at me like that?”

“Everything okay in here?” A nurse pops her head in around the curtain. Will hadn’t even heard the door to the room open.

Hannibal turns his whole body to look at her, dropping Will’s hand in the process. Will immediately misses the comfort and warmth. “We’re fine, thank you,” Hannibal tells her. “A nightmare and accompanying convulsion, if you would like to note it in the chart for the neurologist.”

The nurse laughs and makes her way into the room; the curtain rings rattle, but it doesn’t bother Will as much as it had earlier. “They said you were bossy.” She goes to take the chart from the holder at the foot of the bed, then notices it isn’t there. “Shoot,” she says, “you’d think after all these years I’d remember we’re all electronic now.”

“I have forgotten there isn’t a paper chart several times since Will’s admission,” Hannibal tells her. “No harm done.”

She smiles, and her dimples push at the wrinkles on her face. “I promise I’ll go note it on the computer after I leave here. Oh! And while I _am_ here…” She turns, and her graying bob bounces; Will notices the Snoopys on her scrub shirt for the first time. “There we go.” On the whiteboard across the room is written “Holly, RN” in big purple dry erase letters. “You need someone to yell at,” Holly says, clicking the cap back on the marker, “you just come holler at me.”

“Thank you, Holly,” and Hannibal sounds genuinely grateful.

“Want me to grab you some juice or something?” Will hadn’t felt thirsty until Holly had offered, and he nods. “Righty right.” She bends over slightly to look under the bed, and Will feels his face heat, remembering what’s under there. “I’ll take care a’ that when I come back, too.”

Will has never been so grateful to hear a door close behind someone. Pleasant and helpful or not, he’s not keen on the reminder that he has a piss bag that needs changing.

“It’s a normal function,” says Hannibal, who can apparently read Will’s mind. “There is nothing to be embarrassed about, I assure you.”

“You’re not the one with a catheter, Hannibal.” At least his legs and hands have stopped twitching.

“Have you never seen a neurologist before?”

Will frowns. “No. Never had a need.”

Hannibal hesitates before threading their fingers back together. “I thought Dr. Sutcliffe would have told you by now.”

“Told me what?”

“The encephalitis exacerbated your condition, but…” Hannibal looks away. “I hadn’t been able to scent it; the sweetness of the encephalitis was too strong.”

“Scent _what?”_ asks Will, getting frustrated.

“Your epilepsy,” says Hannibal. “You’re epileptic. Frontal lobe, to be specific. Predominantly, you experience autosomal dominant nocturnal seizures, which is very rare outside of adolescence but, then again,” and Hannibal smiles a little, “you have a very rare brain.”

Will furrows his brow. “Wait, so...what--what are you saying?”

“The electrical disturbances in your frontal lobe may be comorbid with your empathy disorder, as well,” Hannibal continues. “That’s purely conjecture on my part, but neuroatypicals are more likely to experience seizures of one kind or another at some point in their lives. With a proper regimen of medications, your night terrors and wandering may lessen, or even disappear.”

“I thought the anticonvulsants were to stop the seizures left by the damage from the encephalitis.”

Hannibal nods. “They are. Those are the most necessary seizures to treat at this point in time. But the fact that you are epileptic beyond the encephalitis is inescapable.” He licks his lips, looks down, and squeezes Will’s hand more tightly. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”

Will thumps his head back on the pillow, revels slightly in the squeaking of the shitty mattress. He’d certainly love to break something right now. “I’d rather hear it from you than from Sutcliffe, to be honest. Though I am really fucking pissed at you.”

“Why?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Will snaps, “for not getting my encephalitis treated sooner so that I wouldn’t have two types of seizures to worry about?”

“Will, I…” Hannibal’s grip on Will’s hand loosens. He lets his hand slip away. “It was already quite advanced when I first noticed. I hardly see where that is my fault.”

“Of course you don’t,” says Will wryly.

“You have had seizures all your life and not known it,” Hannibal points out. “Now you have a reason for your sleep troubles, possibly a way of treating it and being able to rest better at night. The encephalitis would have injured your brain further if I had kept the information to myself, or worse, never smelled it.”

“So, what, I should be _grateful?”_ Will looks over at Hannibal and is pained momentarily, seeing that the mask has fallen back over his face, that he has schooled his features into an appearance of disinterest.

“Yes,” Hannibal says tightly. “I would be, were our positions reversed.”

Will closes his eyes, swallowing his pride, though he probably left that along with his dignity in the bag under the bed. “I’m sorry. It’s…” And now grief clogs at his throat, and he feels his lips tremble, and he wants to sob but he can’t. “I’m kind of overwhelmed right now.”

He hears Hannibal sigh, and then his palm is warm and comforting on his cheek, and the dam breaks, and Will cries quietly. _“Shhhh,_ it’s alright. I forgive you.”

It’s strange, the ways in which they manage to wrong each other. Will, for not recognizing Hannibal as his savior; Hannibal, for not granting salvation sooner. He knows Hannibal will understand when he echoes him, “I forgive you,” though Will thinks his words are mostly absorbed into the pillow. Then again, maybe not, because Hannibal starts to pet him as he did before, and that feels better than it probably should--not coddling or patronizing, only loving.

“Being mad at you is a lot easier than being mad at my brain,” Will finally says after a long time. His eyes feel swollen and his head hurts.

Hannibal chuckles. “Then be mad at me all you like.”

Will can’t do more than nod and bask in the comfort he’s always been denied, that he’s glad Hannibal isn’t withholding as some strange punishment for Will’s outburst. And then Hannibal stops petting him so he can grab Will’s hand. He kisses his palm and wraps Will’s fingers into a fist, holds it between his own hands, kisses his knuckles and never breaks eye contact and Will’s eyes blur again, but pleasantly so.

Holly brings in two little cartons of orange juice, but doesn’t bother them otherwise. Hannibal insists on opening Will’s, which is endearing but will eventually start annoying Will if Hannibal keeps it up. They sit there like that, sipping their orange juice, speaking silently to each other, well into the morning and the arrival of the breakfast tray.

He’s eating his oatmeal--“This is hardly oatmeal,” Hannibal says, “more of an oat soup.”--when Holly comes in for the third time.

“You’ll be happy to know,” she announces, “that the doctor on call has approved the removal of your catheter and collection bag, which is why I didn’t take care of it earlier.” The last part Holly addresses entirely at Hannibal with a pointed-but-friendly look.

“Oh thank fuck,” Will exclaims. Holly practically guffaws, but Hannibal slowly closes his eyes, face full of tension. Automatically, Will makes a mental note to curse more often. “Hannibal, you wanna…”

“You wish me to give you privacy.” Hannibal opens his eyes, and they’re full of mirth.

“Well it’s kind of a one person job. I’d do it myself if they’d let me.”

“I mean,” begins Holly, “you could let him help with the rest of it.”

Will side-eyes her. “What do you mean?”

“Hate to rain on the ‘thank fuck’ parade,” and Hannibal lets out a small sound of disgust, “but just because the catheter’s coming out doesn’t mean you’re suddenly gonna be able to move around all willy-nilly. You’re still hooked up to heck and half a’ Georgia here, sweetheart.”

“Then what--” Holly waves a bed pan at him. “--oh God, no.”

Hannibal, on the other hand, looks very pleased with himself. _Anything to make me more dependent on him,_ Will thinks disdainfully. _Two can play at this game. I hope._

 

* * *

 

Surprisingly enough, Hannibal doesn’t come to hate helping Will like Will thought he would. Even more surprising, Will gets used to it quickly. Asking for assistance to do his business--and there is literally no terminology in the universe that sounds decent--gives Will a chance to see Hannibal in his medical element. It’s like an intensely crude interpretation of watching Hannibal in the back of that ambulance, calm and collected as always, but somehow different--focused on putting a life back together instead of taking it apart.

After a few days, they both know Will could probably do it by himself. Neither makes a move to stop. Will thinks they’re enjoying talking incessantly with each other too much to take a break from it.

“Did you know,” Hannibal says--and he always looks Will in the eye, never averts his gaze in one direction or another--“that some scientists believe that the ecstatic religious experiences of the saints, their revelations and visions, maybe have been caused by seizure activity in the brain?”

“Really?” Will huffs a laugh. “Well slap me with a case of doubt and call me Thomas.”

“Also in the frontal lobe,” he continues. “Perhaps you are destined for sainthood, Will.”

“I seriously doubt that. Honestly, though, what are you saying, that I should look at my disability as a gift from the Almighty?”

“They say that God works in mysterious ways.” Hannibal moves away as Will finishes; it’s become mechanical already, the two of them working in tandem, no need to discuss. “But I think the two of us know better.”

“Do we?”

“Of course,” says Hannibal with complete certainty. He stands to clean up and to wash his hands, but leaves the door to the bathroom open. “God does not work, at all. That does not make the possibility of communion with such a deity unbelievable, however. It should not be discounted. Ideology is the soil from which dreams and opportunity grow, whether we subscribe to those beliefs or not.”

Will smirks and reaches for the hand sanitizer, though he knows Hannibal will bring a soapy washcloth over, anyway. “Are you saying I should be open to hearing the voice of a petty, vengeful ghost?”

“I have never ascribed those adjectives to anyone, let alone the divine.”

“Then what are you getting at?” Will lifts his hands to Hannibal obediently.

Hannibal doesn’t answer, simply takes a hand and scrubs it with diligence. Watching Hannibal do this never fails to strike him as some strange hybrid between penitence and worship, though the line between those actions is thin already.

“You know,” says Will, wetting his suddenly too dry lips, “‘servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.’”

“I was unaware you were religious.” Hannibal flicks his eyes up to look at Will. He can’t pin down the exact emotion he sees reflected there, but it makes Will’s breath stutter all the same.

“I’m not,” Will eventually manages, “but folks up and down the Delta were. Heard a lot when Dad and I were travelling.”

“And do you intend to wash my feet?”

Will smiles. “It hadn’t crossed my mind. Are you going to wash mine?”

Hannibal switches to the wet washcloth and says, “I would not be opposed. But I thought you were Thomas, not Peter.”

“So I’m your disciple either way?”

And Hannibal laughs at that, like Will never thought he’d see, a laugh that bubbles up from his gut and tilts his face to the ceiling. It suddenly strikes Will that he would be perfectly fine with calling this man, this murderer, this manipulator Teacher.

“I would not be opposed to that, either,” says Hannibal, and he grabs a towel from the hook on the door, shoulders still shaking with his now-silent laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will quotes part of a verse from [John 13](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13%3A1-17&version=NRSV).


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should have something profound to put here, but all I can really come up with is, "Epilepsy sucks on toast."
> 
> Trigger warning for an extremely brief, one-word mention of suicide, but no one tries or even wants to. Still, I feel obligated to mention it.

Now that he knows about his epilepsy, the symptoms Will had previously chalked up to stress and difficulty sleeping are unavoidable. The constant aches and pain in his limbs he had assumed were due to being tense all the time were, in fact, due to tension, only physical rather than emotional. All his life, Will has had migraines; though they were exacerbated by the encephalitis, those aren’t simply headaches, but seizures in and of themselves. The dizziness he’s never complained about, the mood swings, the sleepwalking, the light sensitivity--all are related to his newly-diagnosed seizure disorder.

At first, the knowledge was a comfort. Having a reason for all of the absurd lifelong maladies Will has experienced was a godsend. He wasn’t crazy; he wasn’t at fault; he wasn’t healthy, but there was purpose behind it now. Like his empathy disorder, being epileptic simply _was._

His relief lasted less than a week, long enough for the sudden intense sadness to be a surprise, to sneak up on him insidiously. But Will kept smiling through it, kept moving on. Hannibal gave him a sideways glance now and then, like he knew that Will was troubled, but said nothing.

The routine changed, because Will wasn’t useless. He could take care of himself. Will had been on his own, more or less, for three decades. Taking medication regularly didn’t suddenly make him an invalid, IVs and ports be damned.

The first time he asked Hannibal to give him privacy so he could use the bedpan, Will had very nearly followed it up with, “I’m kidding.” Hannibal looked lost, miserable, downright _forlorn,_ as if the mere concept of Will not needing his assistance was absolute anathema. But it wasn’t as if Will was going to follow Hannibal home, so he needed to get used to not having help at hand. He told Becky, the LPN who works on bath days, that he wanted to take over and bathe himself. The shower still wasn’t an option, but Will knew how a sponge worked and had paid enough attention to Becky that he knew the steps to follow to prevent infection and contamination.

Will gave himself a sponge bath that same afternoon, making plans to call another neurologist and get a second opinion once he was discharged from the hospital. There had been some mistake, obviously. He wasn’t disabled. Will was perfectly fine, now that the encephalitis was being treated. The epilepsy was nothing more than a working diagnosis, one that his new neurologist would deem incorrect. He would be given a clean bill of health, and go back to work--at least, Will would after his full recovery.

Hannibal came back to a clean and well-rested, to a cheerful, stable, confident Will. They talked, and Will ate the hot meal Hannibal had brought for them to share, and everything was fine. Will made Hannibal go home that night to sleep, and the night after that, and the next.

The day after, Will woke up around noon with Hannibal holding his hand in a vice grip.

“I’m still tired,” Will said, groaning at the glare in his eyes, turning his head away from the window and toward Hannibal. He focused on their hands joined together, how clean and neat Hannibal’s nails were, how free from callouses his skin was in spite of his moonlighting as a serial killer. “Feel like I haven’t slept at all.”

Hannibal told him, “You had a number of seizures during the night.”

“How many?”

“Seven.”

“Shit.”

Hannibal had almost laughed--Will could tell from the quick exhalation of his breath. “I imagine you’ll feel very tired today, as you do after a typical night of disturbed sleep.”

Will tried to sit up, and the room swam. “I’ll be glad once all these leftover side effects go away.” Hannibal’s hand squeezed tighter as Will winced from the shooting pain in the front of his head. “Maybe I should lie back down.”

“That would be for the best, I believe.”

“How long do you think it will take?” Will asked.

“The hospital should let you go home within the next two weeks, I should imagine,” said Hannibal. “Your continued convalescence will be three or four months, dependent on Sutcliffe’s recommendation. This is all information you have been privy to.”

“No,” Will said, “I mean the seizures and the dizziness and the typically-disturbed sleep.” When Hannibal said nothing, simply kept looking at Will with that same inscrutable face, he elaborated. “I’m on all these anticonvulsants because of the encephalitis. Just wondering when they’re going to kick in.”

“Will.” Hannibal paused for a moment. “Will, I believe you are in denial regarding the nature of your underlying epilepsy. The current regimen of anticonvulsants are working at keeping the encephalitis-induced seizures at bay. Dr. Sutcliffe will have to try other additional medications to treat the others.”

“You said ‘denial’ and didn’t make some crack about a river in Egypt, Hannibal. I’m proud of you.”

Hannibal’s eyes narrowed. “You are clinging to a false reality to alleviate your depression. I had hoped your post-diagnostic relief would have been longer-lived.”

“I’m not--” Will looked to the monster in the corner of the room for comfort before realizing that the grey man shouldn’t be there any longer. “I wasn’t depressed.”

“Will,” and the stroke of Hannibal’s thumb back and forth along the back of Will’s hand became unbearable.

“I don’t have epilepsy.”

“Yes,” Hannibal said, “you do.”

“No. No, I can’t.”

“Why not?” asked Hannibal, sitting back slightly. His hair was grayer than Will recalled it being before he’d passed out in Hannibal’s office; he wasn’t sure how he hadn’t realized it until now. “You have an atypical mind, but not an immune one.”

Blood dripped from the gray man’s antlers. “I have work to do,” Will murmured, distracted. “For Jack. The academy. Innocent people.”

“Your health is of most importance now. You need respite, not further burden.”

 _If it decides to stay,_ thought Will, tearing his eyes away from the beast in its odd choice of lair, _I will have to give it a name._

“What do you see, Will?”

“I’m not sure.”

Hannibal put his fingers to Will’s wrist, counting the beats of his heart through his radial artery. “Do you believe it to be a hallucination?”

It holds a finger to its lips. “I’m not sure of that, either,” admitted Will.

“So it is easier for you to accept the possibility of a psychotic vision than it is a diagnosis of epilepsy?” Hannibal sounded downright _amused;_ it was infuriating.

“I think,” Will began, “it would be good for me to take your advice and rest.”

Hannibal’s fingernails pressed sharply into the artery, and Will wondered if it was possible for Hannibal to kill like this, to simulate a suicide with nothing more than the upward zip of his talons. “Is that meant to be a polite way of asking me to leave?”

“I didn’t want to be rude lest you decide to strangle me with a tourniquet and be done with it.”

Will’s hand wasn’t so much dropped as it was thrown. It smacked the bed audibly at impact, but Will didn’t turn away from the creature in the corner to acknowledge it. He heard Hannibal gathering his belongings, heard the metal rings on the curtain, heard the forceful shutting of the door to his room, and still he stared at the pit-black eyes of the gray man. To look elsewhere meant to notice that he was alone, but he’d been alone before. Will wasn’t helpless. He could care for himself.

Everything was fine.

 

* * *

 

The meal trays are delivered three times a day, and Will pokes the food around in their little cubbies, sips at the cartons of juice or the cups of coffee, eats just enough for the physician on-call to not shove another nasogastric tube into him. He doesn’t taste any of it, and he wishes it were due to it’s being bland and seasoned in the manner of traditional cuisine of the suburban American midwest. But Will steadfastly refuses to miss Hannibal’s cooking, the special meals he sneaks in for Will that Holly pretends not to see.

When Will neglects to bathe himself, Becky offers to help. She thinks he’s too weak, and maybe she’s right. Will has no inclination to be clean; he can’t see the point, now that he’s refusing visitors. He spends the day watching other people’s problems--soap operas, insipid daytime talk shows, even Fox News, when he needs help losing his appetite. Becky convinces him during _Days of Our Lives_ to at least let her “hit the hot spots” as she calls them. Will lies still and doesn’t put up a fuss, allows Becky to wipe his neck, his armpits, his privates.

He’s breaking and broken, and Will doesn’t care. It’s been a week since Hannibal’s sat with him, and that’s his fault. Sutcliffe comes in to tell him that they’re going to keep him longer than expected; Will’s fevers are returning, and the last EEG shows further deterioration, and that’s probably his fault, too. There’s talk of putting the tube down his throat--Will must not be eating enough, after all--and replacing the foley catheter, and that’s definitely his fault. He sleeps when Holly brings in the chaplain, and cries when they leave, and doesn’t bother to wipe his nose when he falls asleep again. Will murmurs Hannibal’s name into the sweat on his pillow at night, but doesn’t expect to see him in the morning.

Instead, he sees Hannibal shortly after midnight. Will blinks, bleary-eyed, confused by this newest in a line of hallucinations. Will’s stag pushes its master’s head to turn until his cheek connects with Hannibal’s palm, and he’s too solid to not be real.

The water on Will’s face is soothing; one cheek warm from Hannibal’s hand the other from the washcloth scrubbing gently at his skin. His moan is quiet, barely perceptible to his own ears. Will reaches blindly for Hannibal’s arm and connects with bare skin and clutches him.

“Don’t leave me.” The cloth moves to catch his tears, then withdraws. “Please, don’t leave.”

Hannibal shushes him, pulling back the sheets, rolling him from one side to the other to put towels beneath him. He removes Will’s gown and then covers him with a third towel, warm like it’s come straight from the drier.

“That’s nice,” Will slurs.

“I brought it from home in a thermal bag.” Hannibal’s voice is low, quieter than Will’s ever heard it before.

“I’m sorry."

“As am I,” says Hannibal. Will hears the dripping of water into a basin, like rain hitting the surface of a pool. “You are in the midst of traumatic change,” he continues, running a wet washcloth over Will’s hair, another towel beneath his head. “I can feed you, care for you, but you are the one who must push through the shell and hatch, you and you alone. Who is to say that the butterfly feels no pain as it beats its wings futily against the cocoon until, at last, it breaks free?”

Will pushes his scalp into Hannibal’s hands. The soap smells like pine and lemon and licorice. “You’ll stay?” he asks. He can work through the insect metaphor later.

“I promise.” A kiss to his soapy forehead, and Will feels revered, adored, glorified.

Hannibal runs the washcloth over his hair again and again, rinsing it out between each pass. When Hannibal deems it clean, he moves to Will’s neck, his chest, his arms. Will feels half asleep and better than he has while awake for the past week, perhaps longer. Hannibal is meticulous, and Will thinks about the photographs of past tableaus that he has seen, how careful his hands must be when he takes his canvas apart, how he must clean each of them first as he cleans Will now.

He wants to watch the master at work.

“I want to see,” says Will as Hannibal dries off his torso. "Firsthand, not after the fact. I want to know."

“You shall.” Hannibal doesn’t miss a beat. “I will teach you.”

Will _hmms_ as the warm towel covers him back up and Hannibal moves to wash his legs. The images in his mind shift and play out before him, but he doesn’t need to close his eyes anymore, as if his brain is projected on the wall, all static and lines and imperfections in the film brought to light. He sees himself holding a curved knife, ripping into an unsuspecting stomach as Hannibal holds the body from behind. Guts and fat and waste spill over his arms, hot like the water that purifies him now, washed in the blood.

The reel empties, and the projector shakes, and it reminds Will, “I’m epileptic.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Do you think less of me for it?”

Hannibal stops, grips Will’s chin in one hand and forces him to meet his eyes. “Do you?” he asks.

Will admits, “I don’t know.”

“Then I will help you see yourself as whole,” says Hannibal, nodding slightly. “You are greater than the sheep, Will Graham, I promise. Have faith in me, if you cannot have it in yourself.”

“‘This is my comfort in my distress, that your promise gives me life.’”

Hannibal releases Will’s face, smiling with a single side of his mouth. “The Psalms.”

“I suppose.”

“For a man who claims to only know his verses from overhearing them,” says Hannibal, returning to his self-assigned duties, “you seem to retain your scripture quite well.”

“There’s not much else to watch besides televangelists after three in the morning.”

“You should not afflict yourself so.”

Will laughs, and it hurts, and it helps, and it heals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grief sucks, too, but we manage and keep moving forward. <3
> 
> Will quotes [Psalm 119:50](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+119%3A50&version=NRSV). I have no idea if it has ever been used by a televangelist.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been awhile, but here we all are, together again. <3

When Will wakes up, it’s to Hannibal’s hand in his hair and his face close to his. Hannibal’s back has to be aching, both from leaning forward and the odd angle, right cheek resting on his arm which rest, in turn, on the metal bed rail. His eyes are red-rimmed and shadowed in purple. Will reaches for him, still drowsy, and pushes Hannibal’s silver bangs out of his face, and a second and third and fourth time as they stubbornly fall back down.

“‘Llo,” Will says. He feels numb all over, and can’t decide if that’s lingering, residual sleepiness or not.

A corner of Hannibal’s mouth turns up. “Good morning,” he quietly replies, voice as soft as he looks. Will never thought he’d describe anything about Hannibal as being soft, but there’s such an overwhelming gentleness and sweetness to him right now. “I took the liberty of answering your breakfast phone call from the cafeteria.”

“Hmm.” Will rubs the sleep from his eyes with his fist. “They were probably surprised anyone picked up.”

“It may have been mentioned.” Hannibal sits up, but continues running his fingers through Will’s curls, clean, still a little damp. Will has no inclination to stop him. “Why did you refuse food?”

He hadn’t been looking in Hannibal’s eyes, not directly, but Will closes his own reflexively. The beginning of a shamed blush begins creeping and prickling up the sides of his neck. “Wasn’t hungry,” and it’s as poor of an excuse as it sounds.

Hannibal tightens his fingers in Will’s hair and pulls his head up to look at him. A monitor beeps more quickly. “I do not tolerate being lied to, not even a half-truth.”

Will swallows dryly. “I didn’t think it would matter. Me eating,” he quickly amends as Hannibal’s grip tightens, “not the half-lying. I know that matters.”

“Why would it not matter?”

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” Will says, and it feels so pathetic, saying it out loud. “I thought I drove you away by making you feel unwanted.”

Hannibal doesn’t say anything to the contrary, but he relaxes his hold on Will incrementally. He resumes stroking Will’s hair, and Will doesn’t want to fall asleep again. It’s easier than the post-confessional silence, though. Lately, Will’s life feels like nothing more than a series of conflicts, and he’s so very tired of fighting.

Stripes of faint light have begun to paint the blanket by the time Hannibal admits, “I am unaccustomed to these emotions.”

“Which ones?” Will asks. He might be whispering, but he honestly isn’t sure.

“I overreacted to your dismissal of me,” Hannibal says. As an answer, it does an excellent job of sidestepping the question. “Holly called yesterday evening. She was worried about you and thought I should come back to check on you. It was her belief, unfounded or not, that your health was declining.” He takes a breath; his hand in Will’s hair falters slightly. “Sleep escaped her almost entirely.”

It dawns on Will that, though Holly very well may have called him, Hannibal isn’t talking about her. Maybe it’s easier for him, to discuss himself in such a way. Will hadn’t considered that Hannibal might have grown dependent on caring for Will as quickly and naturally as he had become dependent on Hannibal. No wonder he took Will’s outburst of misplaced petulance so badly.

He doesn’t draw attention to it; Hannibal knows he’s intelligent enough to follow along. “I’m glad she called,” he says, instead. “I’m glad you came.”

“So am I.” A pause before Hannibal adds, “I feel responsible for your lack of progress during my absence. As a doctor, I should have known you weren’t ready to care for yourself.”

Will wants to laugh, but settles for grinning widely. “I do seem to do better with your help.”

Hannibal meets Will’s eyes again, and Will doesn’t think he’s earned an ounce of the devotion he finds there. “I won’t deprive you of it again.”

He reaches through the rungs of the bed rail for Hannibal’s right hand. Grasping it as tightly as he’s able, Will pulls it to him, and kisses Hannibal’s ring finger just beneath the knuckle.

“And I without my episcopal ring,” Hannibal murmurs. He pulls his hand out of Will’s to put on his cheek, instead. Will doesn’t remember the last time anyone’s been so overtly physically affectionate with him, nor he with anyone else, the kiss shared with Alana notwithstanding.

“It’s alright,” says Will, determined not to push his cheek into Hannibal’s palm. “I’m not looking for an indulgence.”

“You are likely to be indulged, regardless.” Hannibal gives Will’s face a parting pat, and his hair a final stroke, and then sits back. “My apologies,” he says, “but my spine protests.”

Will misses his touch as soon as it’s gone. “How long were you sitting like that?”

“An hour or two, give or take. I would be more precise, but the clock is behind me.”

“You could’ve turned around and looked, you know.” Will scrunches up his nose as he tries not to yawn and only succeeds in making his sinuses hurt.

“I’ve grown accustomed to seeing you at least once a week,” says Hannibal. “As of late, more so. Neither seeing nor speaking to you for so long a time…” He trails off, flicking his eyes down to look at his hands. Will tries to picture how Hannibal’s hands must look at rest, but he isn’t sure he’s ever seen them idle. Even while playing psychiatrist, his hands exude purpose.

Will hesitates, then says, “You missed me.”

“Of course I did.” A calculating look. “Do you really have so little faith in me?”

“It’s more that I doubt myself,” Will explains. His tongue is beginning to stick to the roof of his mouth, but he doesn’t want to ask for water. He’s not sure why. “I’m not used to being missed for more than practical purposes.”

“Life beneath Jack’s thumb has done you no favors.”

“It brought me to you.” His voice cracks and groans, and Will is startled by the realization that he  _ wants _ to be cared for, that he craves a guiding hand, a strange savior. He screws his eyes shut, hesitant to cry yet again. Will’s cried more since waking up in the hospital than he has his entire life.

Hannibal’s hand is larger than his, warmer than his, there on the backs of Will’s fingers and gone again in the space of a breath. The raccoons skitter across the roof-- _ no, _ Will thinks,  _ the rings of the curtain on the bar _ \--and the door to his room opens, but doesn’t shut. The gray horned man pops in for a visit behind Will’s eyelids, and he’s grateful for the company. He thinks to ask him his name, but then there’s the sound of rolling plastic across the tile floor.

“I ought to have done this several hours ago,” says Hannibal. Will blinks open his eyes just as he sits down in a tall rolling chair, likely stolen from one of the nurses’ stations. Hannibal doesn’t ask first, simply goes ahead and presses the button to adjust the head of Will’s bed, sitting him up, making sure not to pull on or snag any of the various PICC and IV lines. Once satisfied with the angle, Hannibal’s hand finds its way back to Will’s hair.

“It is fine to cry,” Hannibal tells him. “‘You are worried and distracted by many things.’”

So Will stops fighting his eyes, and it’s more as if saltwater needed to escape his tear ducts than it is crying, a release of distress and not sobs to amplify it. “Am I Mary or Martha?”

Hannibal smiles in his strange way. “I would have you as Mary as often as prudent,” he says, “and Martha only when I ask it of you.”

“Am I to be employed or enslaved?”

“Is there a difference?”

“With regards to an apprenticeship with you,” replies Will, “I should imagine not.”

“Smart boy. I am, however, kind to what I own.”

Those words would have, a few months ago, a veritable  _ lifetime _ ago, sent off as many warning bells as Will could fit within the confines of his skull. But that had been before Hannibal; likewise, before Will had begun to see who he was and what he could be. In that regard, he truly was a boy, yet to come into his own. 

“That disturbs you?”

“Sorry,” Will says, “got lost in my head.”

“And have you found your way back?” Hannibal’s voice is soothing, and he’s moved from simply petting Will to lightly stroking behind his ear, down the temporal bone and along the sternocleidomastoid. Will has a vivid mental image of himself as Martha standing in the doorway to Hannibal’s office, watching himself as Mary sit in rapt supplication at Hannibal’s feet, being petted like this, like a favored beast.

“Mostly. It doesn’t disturb me, though, oddly enough.”

“Why not?”

“I like to think that, going forward, you won’t take such egregious chances with my health.” Though, if Will’s being honest with himself, he isn’t sure how much he believes that to be the case.

But Hannibal says, “I would not see you back in this place, especially not by my own hand.” There’s such turmoil and conflict in his gaze that Will almost believes it. Not that Hannibal is lying--Will knows he is being sincere. Only time will tell which part of Hannibal wins over the other, however.

“Even should you harm more than heal going forward,” continues Will, “I feel safer with you. More stable. You make me make sense.”

“You snare me so easily.”

“So do you.” Will reaches for Hannibal’s face. It seems only fair, to be touched and to touch, especially when Hannibal always seems so genuinely surprised by it. “You really aren’t as intimidating as you think you are, you know.”

Hannibal’s eyes close slowly; his hand stills on Will’s neck. “I hope I am only transparent to you.”

“Not transparent,” Will corrects. “Translucent, maybe.” Hannibal practically melts under Will’s fingers, all too willing to turn his face into Will’s palm, to nuzzle against the skin there. “You’re as secretly tactile as I am.”

“You devastate me,” says Hannibal. “I ache to hold you again under better circumstances. I never knew how much I had longed to until I did.”

“When I collapsed in your office?” Hannibal nods. His free hand cradles Will’s to his face. “What happened after? You never said.”

“I had not expected you to pass out,” he begins. “It is a credit to your stubborn determination that you had pressed forward as long as you had. Perhaps some subliminal animal part of your psyche decided at that moment that it was safe to let go, to succumb. One moment, my lips are upon your cheek; the next, you’re falling. I fell trying to catch you--”

“Did we write our own vaudeville comedy act?”

Hannibal huffs in amusement; it tickles down the inside of Will’s arm. “I called Donald--Dr. Sutcliffe--from the floor and told him what was happening, that I would need records falsified on your behalf stating the you were under his care but had yet to have proper tests conducted. Hospital bureaucracy is a strange creature, you see, so I hoped to circumvent any foreseeable delays to your treatment.”

Will coughs, completely parched. “Could you pass me--”

“I wondered when you would ask.” Hannibal gives Will’s neck a final quick scratch, then swivels in his chair to look for the water jug. Will’s hand hovers in the air, no face to rest upon.

“You said you wanted to take care of me,” says Will. He shrugs innocently when Hannibal glances back at him. “I was only trying to help.”

“How very thoughtful of you.” Hannibal stretches out to reach the jug on the overbed table against the wall--he must have pushed it over when he was bathing Will. His cheeks heat thinking about the intense intimacy of the bath, of how greatly he wants to experience it again, and how curious he is to feel the warmth of Hannibal’s body against his own. Nudity has never much appealed to Will--it led to sex, if the media and the vast majority of the population was to be believed. With Hannibal, Will feels like it would be just another of their sessions, only skin to skin.

“What happened--thank you.” The water is room temperature, yet still heavenly. He forces himself to sip and not gulp. “What happened after you called Dr. Sutcliffe?”

“I called an ambulance,” Hannibal says, “and then we waited.” After a long pause, he adds, “And you came to a little, and asked me to hold you.” He looks vaguely haunted, and Will doesn’t know what to make of that. “So I did. You clung to me. The EMTs had to pry your hands from my jacket. It would have been preferable and far less traumatizing to simply let me accompany you on the stretcher,” and Will thinks Hannibal sounds more earnest than he means to.

“I’m sorry,” Will says reflexively.

“Whatever for?”

“I wish I remembered you holding me.”

Hannibal sighs; his hands finds its way back to Will’s hair. “You will tell me if this isn’t alright.” Not a question, but Will would hardly expect it to be.

“Should it suddenly stop being wonderful, you’ll be the first to know.” Will’s stomach grumbles its displeasure. “What are you and the cafeteria making me eat for breakfast, by the way?”

“Fruit and toast. They seemed the least inedible possibilities.”

“You have more faith in the hospital kitchen than I do.” Will sips at his water again.

“I shall bring something for us to share later.”

Will thinks to say something trite and overused as he is supposed to in situations like these--”you don’t have to do that” or “that isn’t necessary”--but that feels so disingenuous as to be rude. Instead, he opts for full honesty. “That would be fantastic.”

There’s something akin to pride in Hannibal’s eyes, and Will takes his own pride in having caused it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try not to put two months between updates next time, life permitting. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is, quite possibly, the most personal piece of fiction I've ever written.

_ The bars to his cell are heavy, crusted with age and unmentionable fluids. Will sits, perched on a metal toilet, no seat, no lid. He hugs his arms around his legs so he can see his feet. His nondescript and issued slip-on shoes confirm where he is, but Will looks around, anyway. On his right, there’s a metal slab of a bed, attached to the wall, rubber-mattressed; to his left, a metal sink, cleaner than it should be, given the state of the cell. _

You scrubbed it with your toothbrush until your fingers bled, _ the man in the mirror tells him.  _ They restrained you to the bed after that--thought you were trying to make a shiv.

_ Will almost remembers; it could have happened last week, to another Will, in another life. _

_ “That seems like a lousy excuse when I could’ve just broken the mirror.” _

It was just that. An excuse. Chilton’s never liked you, but that’s alright, _ the man assures Will.  _ He’ll get his due. He always does. If only he’d just  _ die _ already.

_ Will already knows who the man above the sink is, so he looks through the bars, instead. The concrete walls are dark, and the shadows darker still. Overhead, florescent tubes sizzle and flicker, failing light in a night that doesn’t end. There are no windows here--what is there, in the Inferno, to really look at? Only time burns here, and the sun is merely a star. _

_ “How long was I tied down?” _

_ The man laughs darkly. _ On which occasion? You were there for...five months? Six months? I can’t remember. Though usually you were just--  _ There’s a sound of heavy canvas wrestling against itself. _ \--Bound and determined, you might say.

_ It’s a struggle not to groan. “You’re worse with puns than Hannibal.” _

Why, thank you.

_ “But I specifically meant after the toothbrush.” _

Long enough, I suppose.

_ Will’s throat is dry, but the sink is terrifying, and he doesn’t want to ask why. At least, the gray man hiding in the hallway doesn’t think he should. _

_ His brain is starting to become annoyingly crowded. _

_ “Long enough for what?” he asks. “Did I break?” _

Never,  _ and the mirror man seems proud. _ After your cup cracked the first time--before you were mistakenly committed, I mean--you never broke again, either inside these walls or out. No,  _ he continues, _ it was the  _ smell _ of you that finally got to the orderly. Do you remember what you said to Frederick after?  _ Before Will can answer, _ Wait, no, of course you don’t.

_ Will rubs at his face; it’s pricklier than he cares for. “Then what did I say?” _

That he shouldn’t be surprised you were full of shit.

_ He would laugh, were it funny. There’s not much funny about a straightjacketed simulacrum, Will thinks, especially not one glorifying the act of being forced to lie in one’s filth. A cursory glance back toward the bed shows a sheet, and a number of discomfiting stains, and then Will decides to forget that the bed exists, at all. _

_ Instead, Will watches the gray man with his antlers sidle further and further into the dim light. It’s almost like the creature is afraid to approach the cell, but Will doesn’t know what could frighten a monster besides another monster. He expected to see the same emaciated figure as always; instead, it’s dressed in an impeccable suit, the same graphite color as its skin. Another step, and there’s a faint windowpane check visible on the fabric. A third, and Will sees a waistcoat, and a maroon handkerchief, and a crimson tie. _

_ Hannibal, then. _

It's his fault, you know.

_ “What is?” _

You mean besides everything?

_ Will fights the urge to roll his eyes. Had madness made him mouthy, or the other way around? “My being here.” _

You already know that,  _ snaps the man in the mirror, for Will refuses to call him himself. _ But Hannibal really is the cause of every bad thing between Hobbs and the rest of your life. Well. Him,  _ the man amends, _ and quantum physics. It’s complicated.

_ Will snorts; it echoes off the cell’s walls and down both ends of the hallway. “Isn’t it always?” _

You have it easy, comparatively speaking. Most of the big pieces are already sorted for you.

_ “Epilepsy and encephalitic hospitalization sure don’t  _ feel _ easy,” replies Will. Sneering, he adds, “Even comparatively speaking.” Will finally looks back at the sink; the antlered not-Hannibal’s head tilt was growing too familiar. Before he can remind himself not to, Will asks, “Why the sink? Was it somehow dirtier than the rest of this hellhole?” _

_ A viscous drop of black drips from the faucet. It hits inside the basin with a wet  _ thump.

You just needed it to be clean. That’s all.

_ “That’s all?” _

That’s all,  _ the man repeats. His voice is sharp, though it does sound partially obstructed. _ Why won’t you come see me?

_ Will runs his hand through his hair, and it’s longer, too, a head full of tangled curls. He finds that he likes it long, so he does it again, and a third time. Maybe he can close his eyes and pretend Hannibal doesn’t have antlers, and isn’t melting into the wall, and isn’t complicit with complex mathematics in ruining his life wherever he is in this dream. _

How do you know this isn’t real?

_ “I like to think I can distinguish between fantasy and reality.” _

Yeah,  _ says the man, _ you always have. Comparatively easy, remember?

_ “Also the, ‘Is this the real life?’ schtick doesn’t exactly work once you’ve told me it isn’t,” Will reminds him. _

I never said this wasn’t real. I just said you had it easy compared to the rest of us.  _ He pauses. _ You should come here.

_ “Said the spider to the fly.” _

Oh, no.  _ Will hears the mirror crack as the man laughs. _ No, we’re all flies in this web. In  _ his _ web. Imagine yourself a spider all you like, my friend. The most you’ll ever be is a moth, and that’s only if you’re lucky enough not to beat yourself to death inside your Father’s womb.

_ Will pulls his hand out of his hair; it’s covered in blood and black feathers and shards of porcelain. He looks up, thinking his gray friend will save him--and when had Will decided he wasn’t safe inside his own skull? But the not-Hannibal has fully faded into the concrete, charcoal-colored veins springing out from his outline and cracking along the walls. _

‘Come in! and know me better, man!’

_ “I despise Dickens.” _

What a coincidence!  _ His twin in the mirror is outright cackling now. _ So do I. It is very apt right now, though, isn’t it? ‘Look upon me!’  _ taunts the man. _ ‘You have never seen the like of me before!’

_ “You aren’t a ghost,” Will says, more of a self-reassurance than a rebuttal. “You’re certainly not the present.” _

Not to you, maybe. But to the guy that quietly shit himself in protest in that bed over there?  _ Oh, _ I am so very,  _ very _ present to him.

_ Will stretches his legs, trying to sit down on the rim of the toilet bowl without falling in. “Yet To Come, then?” _

_ The mirrored man makes a series of vague, noncommittal noises. They sound strangely moist to Will, like they’ve been collected on the back of a sheet of plastic while still warm. _ “Not for you, I suppose,”  _ he finally replies. _ “You actually make halfway decent choices. So, you know.”  _ The man coughs, and Will watches a few drops of errant spit come through the splintering glass. _ “Maybe keep doing that.”

_ Rising to his feet, Will asks, “If I come over there, will I wake up?” _

Only one way to find out, isn’t there?

_ Every step Will takes to the sink doesn’t so much shorten the distance between two points so much as it redefines the journey. His gut sloshes, then tightens, like he’s trying to hold himself back, or maybe together. A sharp pain, and then a relaxing of muscles. Will thinks this must be what it feels like to sleepwalk--he’s never remembered the particulars before. _

_ He keeps his eyes downcast, but still has to tiptoe to see into the sink, and there’s an odd strain in his groin. Frowning, Will reaches to grasp the cold metal edge, and pulls himself up to look inside. _

_ There’s bile, three aspirin, and an ear. _

_ Far above, the man in the mirror--the man that Will simultaneously is, isn’t, and could never be--giggles hysterically. The sink pulls away from the wall under Will’s weight; he loses his balance, then catches the back of his shoe in the drain in the floor, finally landing on the bed. His ass is wet, and warm, then cold, and he’s screaming, then-- _

 

* * *

 

Will jerks awake, and he’s back in his hospital room, bleary eyed, chest heaving. His shoulder smarts where he’s pulled at his PICC line--his inner arm, too, where his IV has yanked free. But none of that matters currently, not when the moonlight streams through his window, blinds painting the light in stripes that look like bars across his legs. He’s sweated through his clothes, and the bed sheets, and the blanket.

“Hannibal,” Will murmurs, then remembers that Hannibal isn’t here.  _ The sitter had an emergency, _ he reminds himself;  _ Hannibal is at home, with the dogs, instead of at home here, with you.  _ Will tries to regulate his breathing, but the air stifles as it goes in and shudders as it comes out.  _ This isn’t a cell; there’s no Frederick waiting to torture you; Hannibal loves you and would never commit you. _

Half of his mind is still stuck in a future that didn’t happen, though. Will’s subconscious has never been kind; his resting imagination is far more vicious than his waking one. It whispers,  _ He still could, you know. Hannibal said he would never hurt you like  _ this _ again, not that he would never hurt you. _

But Will knows better. He  _ does, _ dammit.

His bed is damp--Will hates nights like this, thought that they were gone along with the brain fever, thought that all of the associated medical nastiness had been eliminated.

Wait. Eliminated.

Will cringes.  _ Oh, God, please, no. _

The one thing he’d never told Hannibal: his night sweats weren’t always just sweat. Before, however, Will had the luxury of being able to clean himself up, could ball up the wet sheets and the clinging boxers and throw them in the washer. It wasn’t like he was ever able to go back to sleep after wetting the bed like a fucking child. He had hoped it would go away, that it would magically disappear, though he’s had accidents his entire life.

_ Fuck. What if it’s the epilepsy? _

His hands shake as Will presses the button for the nurse’s station.

“Hey there, hon.” Holly’s voice is slightly tinny through the small speaker. “Everything alright?”

Will chews at his lip before finally answering, “Not...not really, no.”

“You need some help?”

_ What a loaded fucking question. _ “I think so.”

“Alright,” she says, “I’ll be right over, okay? Take a deep breath.”

He hadn’t noticed his own hyperventilating, or the speeding pulse of the machine. Will nods at the speaker as he tries to regulate his breathing, an unsuccessful venture since he first woke up. The door to his cell-- _room, Will, room_ \--opens, and then the raccoons scatter in all directions across the roof, and then Holly is there, an angel of mercy.

“What’s going on?” she asks as she flips on the little light above the sink. Will swears he can see his counterpart in the mirror.

He scrunches his eyes closed. “I…” Will shakes his head; it’s impossible to get the words out.

A wrinkling hand takes his, squeezing it tightly. “You can say it,” Holly tells him. “No one but us chickens here.”

“You can smell it, can’t you?”

“Now that I’m over here, yeah.”

Will lets his head fall back against the pillow. “Can’t believe I pissed myself.”

She pats his arm. “Happens to the best of us. C’mon, hon,” and Holly gently tugs on his hand. “Let’s put you back to rights.”

Holly smells like Avon lotion and baby powder, but if Will closes his eyes, he can almost pretend this is Hannibal caring for him. Hannibal, pulling the urine-soaked sheets from underneath him, because Will seems to be restrained in any scenario these days, whether by straightjackets in his brain or intravenous fluids in the present or Hannibal’s words. Never again would Will be deprived of his help--he’d promised, hadn’t he, in those precise words?

Will isn’t sure what help entails, if the Hannibal in his dream had only been helping, too. All he knows is he craves Hannibal’s touch now, that he wants it to be Hannibal cleansing his sins.

"'I will do whatever you ask in my name,'" says Will’s savior, his Teacher. It may only be in Will’s head, but it’s Hannibal’s voice that echoes there.

“Hey,” says Holly, lightly slapping the outside of his bare thigh. “Don’t go disassociating on me. That’s what’s got you embarrassed in the first place.”

Will huffs a laugh, but opens his eyes; in the corner, the gray man nods, agreeing with her. “I think I’m embarrassed because I peed in my sleep,” he says, “but whatever you say.”

“It can happen, you know. With the seizures, I mean.” Holly prods his side, and he rolls to let her tuck some kind of pad beneath him. “You done this before?”

He swallows, and Will’s so tired of feeling tears slip out of his eyes that he could cry even more. “Yeah,” he confirms. “It was one of those...I have night sweats, so I could just sort of pretend it wasn’t what it was. And I sleep alone, anyway.”

She walks around the bed to straighten out the pad. “You know there’s not a damn thing wrong with having an accident.” Not a question, Will notes, but a statement.

_ The Gospel truth. _ “I’m thirty-four years old.”

“And a pretty young thing you are, bless your heart.” Holly adjusts the pad and sighs, grabbing the clean sheets from the foot of the bed. “There’s a reason they make Depends that look like underwear, hon, and that’s because your pelvic floor just ain’t the same after three kids.”

Will can’t help but chuckle, and Holly’s smiling at him again. “It’s only ever at night.”

“I’m sure your handsome, stoic boyfriend’s gonna want t’ change your chux pad and the sheets--how often does this happen to you?”

“He was a doctor,” says Will. He can feel his neck heating up all the way past his jawline and to the backs of his ears. “And once or twice a month, I guess. Got a physical and they said everything was...it all checked out.”

“Well,” Holly begins, stretching the elastic corner of the fitted sheet around the mattress, “I imagine y’all will continue spending your nights together, so that might be a boat you want to row soon. Guarantee he’s gonna opt for absorbent undies, control freak like that,” and she winks at him, and Will kind of wants to sink into the bed, himself. “None of that now,” says Holly, swatting at his foot. “Ain’t nothin’ to apologize for, nothin’ to hide. So your needs are a little different. Big whoop.”

“I’m  _ disabled.” _ The words are foreign in his mouth, roll around behind his teeth like marbles.

Holly puts her hands on her hips and says, “And there’s nothin’  _ wrong _ with that, and don’t let anybody tell you the fuck otherwise.” She cocks her head, appraising him. Will’s not sure what she finds, but she nods like she approves of it. “Don’t be ashamed. It might slow you down, yeah, and you’re gonna have to learn to defend yourself and your needs better--and don’t you dare tell me you stand up for yourself already,” she snaps, and Will closes his mouth. “Sometimes the person you have to beat up is the one you look at in the mirror.”

Will can’t do anything but agree, because she has no idea how right she is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! I think I had a bit of a block on this because of the deeply delving into my soul and my own epileptic experience. But I'm happy to return to this at long last. <3
> 
> (Also, for those playing the home game, the quoted verse is John 14:13 NRSV.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back! I actually do have Grahamian time slips, guise. My apologies.
> 
> I've had a few people ask over the course of this fic what quoiromantic means. Hannibal and Will are going to talk some about their respective romantic and sexual orientations in this chapter, but not blatantly, because these boys can't talk like regular human persons. Thus, [here's an entry from the Aromantics Wiki](http://aromantic.wikia.com/wiki/Wtfromantic) that breaks it down fairly well; [here is an ask answered by theasexualityblog on tumblr](http://theasexualityblog.tumblr.com/post/103421319278/sorry-but-whats-quoiromantic) that is more succinct.
> 
> The other name for quoiromantic is WTFromantic. If that doesn't describe Will Graham, then I have no idea what does.
> 
> If you have more questions, [feel free to drop me an ask](https://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/ask)!

“I wet the bed last night.”

Hannibal freezes, hand still on the curtain, helmet still on his head, like he’d rushed straight to Will’s side in lieu of making himself publicly presentable. Between that and the now ever-present backpack in his other hand, the leather jacket, the motorcycle gloves, Hannibal looks like a man on the run from the most prestigious biker college.

Will loves it, though for much different reasons than Beverly. He's not sure how to put the attraction into words, assuming that words to do so are even available. For now, though, Will stares at his reflection in Hannibal’s visor, acknowledging the antlered man behind him. The antlers almost look like they belong to Will, although, assuming that the gray man himself is Will’s, then the antlers must also be his.

Another long moment until Hannibal finally says, “A good morning to you, as well.”

“I had to tell you before I lost the nerve,” Will tells him with a small shrug. “The trauma has mostly passed, but it's still...well.”

“Embarrassing.” He releases the curtain, and removes his helmet. Silver hair falls down into his face. It's growing very gradually. “Has this happened to you in the past?” he asks, setting down his belongings in the same sequence as always: helmet on the chair, backpack on the floor along the same line, leather jacket over the helmet. Hannibal usually wears a dress shirt, but not today.

“That's my t-shirt.” And it is, the tight gray one Will favors for sleep, soft and worn. He thinks he picked it up at Walmart, but isn't sure when. Surprisingly, the shirt looks  _ right _ on Hannibal, even tighter than on Will, showing off the strength of the Ripper, of a predacious beast. Barely contained chest and arms, but a definite plushness to his belly. It makes him human. Will appreciates the reminder.

Hannibal would appear unfazed to anyone else who walked in; Will knows him too well already, and dangerously so. But the honesty is still unexpected when he says, “I missed you greatly. More than anticipated.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

The slightest movement at the corners of his mouth. “As you should.” Just as he always does when coming from his home, Hannibal starts unpacking food from his backpack. “The dogs are well, before you ask.”

Will grins. “Did they mob you when you walked in?” Before Hannibal can ask, Will explains, “Because you probably smelled like me.”

He looks up at Will from the floor. It makes Will’s belly flop, peering down at him like that, though Will knows their positions are reversed, always reversed, until the day they are truly equals. Truthfully, Will doesn’t mind playing supplicant for a while. He’s never had the best mind when it comes to decision-making, though Will always has the best of intentions. Turning off his brain and following his Teacher sounds refreshing.

“I could have taken a shower.”

“But you didn’t.”

Hannibal rises, quietly placing his containers and thermos and tiny ceramic cups on the overbed table. If Will didn’t know better, he’d think Hannibal looked unsettled. “No,” he quietly replies. “No, I did not.”

Will’s unsure whether he should push it or not, but still asks, “Did you sleep in my bed?”

That makes Hannibal glance back over at him. “Where else would I have slept?”

“It’s just that I have a low thread count, is all.” He honestly can’t remember the last time he teased someone, or anyone, for that matter. Their repartee is typically borderline pseudoscience, a waltz through philosophical psychology. This is just as nice, however, this feeling that he and Hannibal can have not only relatively normal conversation, but can dig and poke at each other.

It’s a bit like prodding a caged tiger with a stick, Will supposes. Only time will tell if the tiger stabs back.

“The sheets did leave something to be desired, yes.” Hannibal carefully lifts the aluminum foil from around the edges of a ramekin; there are three more beside it, but Will is drawn to the rustling of the foil. It’s a peculiar sound, like metal hooves through pine needles, all dried up and dead.

The stag whuffles behind his head. Will ignores it. “Probably the pillow, too. I keep meaning to buy a new one.”

“Perhaps you should purchase two.” There’s nothing but heat in Hannibal’s eyes; it makes Will feel as shriveled as the pine beneath his feathered stag’s feet. “Or perhaps I presume too much.”

Will accepts the ramekin, and then a fork. When he eyes one of the steaming cups of coffee--“You make the best coffee, Hannibal. Did you know that?”

“I owe the awe to my French press.” Hannibal smiles in his small strange way and passes Will his cup. They’re the same as the cups they drank from during their first meal together. Little doubt that, as with everything Hannibal does, there was purpose to it.

“Well, who or whatever I need to thank, I do.” The steam from the coffee on his face is a nice counterpart to the warm breath of the stag on the side of his neck. Will’s going to have to bring this up to Hannibal at some point, these continued maybe-hallucinations of his. But not today. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Oeufs en cocotte,” replies Hannibal as he places a ramekin in the center of a folded cloth napkin before handing it to Will. “Egg and heavy coconut cream, seasoned simply and baked in a hot water bath. This one,” he says, gesturing to the ramekin in Will’s hands, “has been prepared atop a layer of sautéed spinach and mushrooms. The second has balsamic caramelized onions.”

“I’m suddenly famished.” Will dips into the egg with his spoon; the yolk reminds him a little of lemon pudding, and the white of the egg is shiny and still wet. “This smells amazing. But you better be careful.”

“Why is that?”

The bite tastes as good as it smelled. With the egg broken, Will can smell garlic and the earthiness of the mushrooms. He can’t help but wonder how they were grown. “I could get used to this,” he says after swallowing, “the whole gourmet breakfast thing. I usually have toast on the way out the door.”

Hannibal catches his eyes, one finger underneath his chin, turning his face upward to where Hannibal sits perched on the rolling chair. “I sincerely hope you do.”

“Have toast?”

“Get used to this.” He shakes his head slightly. “Cheeky boy.”

The blood doesn’t rush to Will’s cheeks; it’s more of a slow crawl of warmth up his neck. “Are you going to come to my house every morning?”

“I had hoped you would stay with me,” and the world sharpens.

Will swallows. “You mean while I’m recovering?”

There’s a tenderness to Hannibal’s face that is innately foreign, Will imagines for them both. “For as long as you like,” he says, which Will understands to be, “For as long as I keep you.” Were Will under the impression that Hannibal was as mortal as the rest of them, he might actually be fooled into thinking Hannibal meant it less possessively.

“We are both very much creatures of solitude.”

“And we are both very much the same.”

_“And_ I won’t be caged.”

Hannibal smirks at him, amused. “Are you not just as ensnared as I am?” When Will doesn’t answer, going instead for his coffee, Hannibal asks, “If I may present a logical argument first?”

“You’re going to whether I agree to it or not, Mr. Spock,” says Will with a snort. He watches the coffee ripple along with his breath.

“Most of your seizures present in your sleep. Often, this leads you into dangerous situations. Your medicines aren’t anywhere near balanced because Dr. Sutcliffe has yet to determine a therapeutic regimen. Your seizures may even worsen while such medications and doses are determined. Recovery from the encephalitis, as you mentioned, will be lengthy.”

There’s a tightness in Will’s chest, physical disbelief in his throat. “So you’ve appointed yourself as my de facto caretaker.”

“Who else would you propose for such a task?”

“I’m not exactly tolerable company. What is it they say about fish?”

Hannibal chuckles; it’s a lovely sound, and not only for its rarity. “I have a fisherman, not his catch.”

“You hardly intend to let me keep fishing from the stream.” He expects a rising of bile, albeit only a little; his acceptance of Hannibal comes easily, and Will looks forward to learning the trade, but there remains a softness in his heart for humanity as a whole that Hannibal doesn’t possess. But the bile doesn’t come, nor any of the other humours.

“I only wish to change the river’s source,” he says. “What you find in that river is entirely up to you.”

Will knows it for what it is, however: a half-truth. Hannibal never lies.

“Yet you tell me to follow you and allow you to make me a fisher of men.”

“You are opposed?”

Raising his cup to his lips at last, Will replies, “No,” and Hannibal’s smile is glorious.

“And so the net continues to break.” Hannibal takes the first bite from his own ramekin. It’s obscene, the way he chews, the way he savors, the way he swallows. His eyes are closed; his nostrils flare as he inhales, like the way a oeonphile takes a second whiff after a drink to further enjoy the bouquet. Will wonders if he’ll learn to consume that way, too, but not for long. The answer is easy.

“We were talking about cohabitating,” says Will, redirecting. “Isn’t it a little soon? Our relationship is only in its infancy.” Will isn't sure if the coy way he gazes at Hannibal is entirely warranted, but Hannibal’s intrigued return is confirmation enough that it is.

“Doesn't any apprentice take residence in his master’s home?”

Will shifts in his bed. Hannibal tilts his head, and smiles just as slightly. He does Will the courtesy of allowing him to move on--a conversation for later, Will imagines, whether he wants to discuss it or not.

“Regardless,” begins Will, “I’m loathe to give up my home, never mind my dogs, never mind my peace, my quiet, my freedom. And there are...there are ways in which I imagine you should want me that I cannot give you. Some parts of my clay that can’t be remade in your image, whether I would allow it or not.”

“Such as?”

Or perhaps they'll discuss it now.

Will takes another bite, mulling over the best way to broach the topic, and Hannibal knows better than to interrupt Will’s mental wanderings. He prizes them, and Will suddenly has the ludicrous mental image of a bumper sticker on the back of Hannibal’s Bentley: “My empath outmaneuvered your honor roll killer.”

_ My empath ate your dishonorable sheep. _ He stares into the yolk, but it doesn’t stare back. Cannibalism unawares was, perhaps, preferable.

“I don’t love in conventional ways,” he tells Hannibal after eating the rest of the offending yolk. A clumsy introduction, but and introduction nonetheless.

“Were you under the impression that I did?” Hannibal peers at Will over the rim of his cup.

“I mean that I don’t...” He sets his ramekin down on his lap, spoon slid beneath the spinach. “Look, I’m going to be frank. I don’t understand what differentiates a friend from a lover. I’m not particularly interested in sex, though others seem to be under the impression that I  _ am.” _

“Alana?” He sounds bitter.

“I only wanted a--a closeness, a reminder that I was still human, still alive. It’s as I told you before. Alana is a friend, just as Beverly is a friend, though I know her less. Honestly, I know them both very little, because I’ve never really been interested in knowing anyone, at all.” Will smiles at Hannibal and adds, “Until you, anyway.”

“But?”

“I don’t know what you want from me beyond a friend and mentee, or if you want anything besides that, or if what I feel for you is love or if it’s  _ in _ love or if there’s even a goddamn difference between those two feelings.”

Hannibal sets down his cup; Will can’t get a good read on his expression. “You love me?”

Will winces. “That would be what you picked up on.”

“I would argue that it’s the most important part,” says Hannibal. “‘Burying the lede’ as it’s called.”

“The rest of it was important, too,” Will insists. “It was mostly just reiterating what I’ve told you before, but it was crucial enough to, in fact, reiterate.”

“And how would you define this love of yours?”

That...wasn’t exactly the reaction Will was expecting. “We’ve known each other a short time, and yet--” Hesitating, he goes to take another quick sip of his coffee.

Hannibal isn’t having it, though. “Give me your cup,” he orders, softly, gently, but with an underlying edge. What could Will do but obey? “Now,” begins Hannibal, setting the cup down beside his own, taking Will’s hand between his own, “tell me, my Plato.”

Will can’t stop the fluttering of his eyes, doesn’t even try. “That was essentially what I was going for, yes.” His voice is barely more than a whisper. “It’s more than romance; loftier, holier. Sexual attraction is beyond me--”

“For me, as well,” Hannibal says. He keeps Will’s hand in his left, the right settles over Will’s ear, thumb caressing his cheek. “We are the embodiment of the Platonic ideal. You are the closest I shall ever come to human sexual desire.”

“I’m more of a masturbate beside each other and say dirty things type, Socrates.” Will’s reward for his crudeness is Hannibal’s outright laughter.

“Another thing we share, then. I’ve never engaged in carnal desires of the flesh.”

“But you would engage mine?”

“Oh, yes.” His voice is breathy; it sends a pleasant shiver down Will’s spine. “I would have you in all things, Will. In every way.”

That should terrify Will--he  _ knows _ that it should.

It doesn’t.

“Why else would I willingly sacrifice so much?” asks Hannibal. “Though, truly, it is no sacrifice, pledging myself to your care and well-being. I welcome the challenge.”

Will isn’t sure if his smile is more of a grimace, but Hannibal doesn’t comment on it. “And what of the worst results of my night terrors?”

“That doesn’t trouble me, either. You are more than the sum of your parts,” he says. “I shall care for your body as fervently as I shall care for your mind. It is my duty.”

“Your duty?” Will’s eyes open narrowly.

“My privilege,” Hannibal amends. “My pleasure.”

And Will understands it now. “You would have me dependent on you.”

Hannibal’s hand tightens around Will’s, constricts like the predator he is. “Wouldn’t you?”

**Author's Note:**

> I made a [pinterest board](https://www.pinterest.com/shiphitsthefan/ficthe-suns-light-failed/) for this, in case you're curious.
> 
> You can find me on my [tumblr](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/). I also chirp occasionally witty things on [twitter](https://twitter.com/shiphitsthefan).
> 
> Kudos and comments validate my existence. <3 [[comment policy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/profile)]


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